Why Business Disruptors Thrive In Turbulent Times

Don’t let this crisis go to waste. Start your plans to upend your market, TODAY!

Warren Buffett’s investing advice—“be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful”—is also the approachcourageous leaders are taking right nowto revolutionize their industries.

Anna was really stuck. But she knew it wouldn’t last long.

Like many, her business had been eviscerated overnight. A successful entrepreneur, she had created a thriving, close-knit company that used outdoor activities to help groups learn and grow together. In her mind, the very nature of her business demanded human contact, which was now impossible.

With “social distancing” the norm, she was out of business and understandably afraid. She worried about her employees, her family, her cash flow and her future. She couldn’t sleep, and she wasn’t feeling very courageous.

This story should sound familiar to most of you because businesspeople around the world are stuck right now.

According to leadership expert Rand Stagen, in moments of fear (such as now), people typically react in one of three ways: They avoid the issue, they surrender their leadership position to others, or they rebel by disregarding the brutal facts. Anna had experienced all three reactions within the first few hours of the shutdown. And that was the reason she was stuck.

But Anna was about to become unstuck. She realized—as I hope you will—that this was her time to shine. It was her time to create.


How Disruptors Respond to Market Shifts

“The concept of disruption is about competitive response; it is not a theory of growth. It is adjacency to growth. But it’s not growth.”

—Clayton M. Christensen

I define Disruptors as people who blow sh** up for the good of the whole; they manage to consistently “break” things better. Every company has Disruptors walking through their halls, and most famous firms were started by someone who earned this title. Observing how Disruptors become creators during times of chaos can provide valuable lessons for all business leaders. And recent history has plenty of examples from which to learn.

For example, do you know what Airbnb, BambooHR, Blink Home, DreamWorks, Hootsuite, Houzz, LearnVest, LegalZoom, Rent the Runway, Square, SiriusXM, Sprinklr, Trunk Club, Twilio, Uber and Venmo all have in common?

At least three things:

  1. They were all started by a Disruptor like Anna;
  2. They all played a part in blowing up an established industry; and
  3. They were all started in the midst of a recession.

Repeat, they were all started in the midst of a recession.

Large shifts in the market are signals to Disruptors that the time is right to create. And what they create is a unique, competitive response to the changing market conditions in the form of a new product, service, business model or company.

This is not how large companies typically respond to the same signals.


Why Big Companies Can’t Do This

Unfortunately, most large and established organizations are perfectly engineered to kill any idea (read: unique competitive response) that threatens their legacy products and services. Most successful companies are intentionally designed to optimize existing systems, not create new ones. Therefore, under pressure, people who work for big companies will do what they were hired and trained to do: grind every ounce of efficiency out of the existing model. If this means mass layoffs, closed offices, shelving marketing, delaying investments…so be it.

This is why large companies will often partner with, hire or purchase companies started by Disruptors like Anna. It is also why they often demand to work with only the most senior partners at consulting firms; they need to hear from the Disruptors.

The way Disruptors think differently under pressure reveals three important lessons we can all learn during times of chaos.


Disruptor Lesson 1: Realign Your Team

Yes, it is difficult to talk about scary things like layoffs, cash flow and closings. But under extreme pressure, people will only support what they help create, so unilateral decisions are bound to fail.

How do you get everyone on board? You ask and answer a very simple question: What is the outcome we want? Once you are clear on the answer, you can empower your team.

For Anna, the answer was simple: “I want to be able to deliver our services virtually—and globally—within 30 days.” Instantly, her team had a final destination from which to map a strategy.


Disruptor Lesson 2: Reimagine Your Business

“When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars, people said, ‘Nah, what’s wrong with a horse?’ That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.”

—Elon Musk

Disruptors know that there is another simple question that is central to many of the world’s most profound innovations.

The question: “What business am I really in?”

This is a great question to ask when your legacy products or services are falling out of favor or when—like today—there is a major shift in the market.

If you answer the question “What business am I really in?” too quickly, or if you have been working in a historically successful company or industry too long, you probably just answered wrong.

I’ll explain.

Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt, back in 1960, captured one of the major challenges most companies face today. His now-classic article Marketing Myopiabegins this way:

“Every major industry was once a growth industry. But some that are now riding a wave of growth enthusiasm are very much in the shadow of decline. Others, which are thought of as seasoned growth industries, have actually stopped growing. In every case, the reason growth is threatened, slowed, or stopped is not[emphasis in the original] because the market is saturated. It is because there has been a failure of management.”

This failure is caused by what Levitt called “marketing myopia,” which he defines exactly as you would expect. It’s what happens when company leaders define their mission too narrowly. In other words, it’s a form of business nearsightedness or shortsightedness.

Levitt offered what are now a few classic examples.

Before he died, I spoke to the author and thought leader Clayton Christensen about this concept. He framed it this way: You need to ask, “What is the job to be done?” For example, Clayton says that the owner of a drill bit company will describe his job as, “We are in the drill bit making business.” This answer is the result of marketing myopia.

So, to Levitt’s list, we could add Clayton Christensen’s example:

The point is that people don’t come to a drill bit company for drill bits, as both Levitt and Christensen would say, “They come to you because they want to make a quarter-inch hole.”

Under pressure, this central question helped Anna realize that she was in the “courageous connections” business. And making courageous connections is a growing global need that can be accomplished virtually.


Disruptor Lesson 3: It is Time to Reignite Your Industry

“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may also start a winning game.”

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is perhaps no bigger cliché than “One big idea can change the world.” I used to roll my eyes at clichés. As I grow older and wiser, I have realized that most clichés are slathered in truth.

Right now, more than ever, your team and your industry have dropped their immunity to big ideas. Big ideas are literally the medicine that both need to thrive. Big ideas will inspire action and change in your company. Even better, they will fill the growing need gaps in the market that are being created by leaders who are frozen with fear or too busy cutting jobs to notice they are in the wrong business.

In the military essay The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote,“In war, the way is to avoid what is strong, and strike at what is weak.” Disruptors, this is your time. Don’t waste it.



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